First they bought Skyera, erstwhile all flash array startup. Now WD's HGST unit is buying Amplidata, a scale-out object storage software vendor. Is the world's largest disk drive vendor moving into the storage systems business or not?

The Transformer Book Flip TP550LA is a 15.6-inch multimode notebook whose Core i7 processor and reasonable price are added attractions. Bear in mind, though, that it's heavy and unwieldy (especially in tablet mode), screen resolution could be higher, and battery life isn't great.

A proposal by the government to cut Australia's R&D tax offset rate by 1.5 percent has been defeated in the Senate, with the Labor opposition calling the move a win for innovation among local small and medium-sized enterprises.